Dialogue is the one time your readers get firsthand information from your characters themselves. Everything else—their actions, their appearances—are all filtered through the narration.
Needless to say, dialogue is important. Each of your characters should have a distinct way of speaking that reflect their personalities and viewpoints.
Don’t worry, you won’t solve this problem at the end of your 45th Buzzfeed quiz on what type of pizza your character is deep down inside. No, instead let us turn to Linguistics, the study of language, for concrete attributes of speech that you can utilize in your dialogue.
Slang and proper nouns
Some of your characters will employ a level of slang and some will use proper terms. Imagine the difference between Ron and Hermione? What would Ron call Care of Magical Creatures Class? What would Hermione?
Indirect vs Direct Speech
“I was looking at your necklace and it broke.” vs “ I accidentally broke your necklace.”
If you have a character who always avoids responsibility vs a character who is generally honest, these small idiosyncrasies should show through your dialogue.
Formal vs Informal
“Hey! You didn’t tell us we couldn’t exchange this, did you?” vs “Mr. Barnes, I wasn’t aware of your exchange policy.”
Just by looking at the quotations, what assumptions can you make about the speakers’ personalities?
When you sit down and create your characters, make sure to think about how direct and formal they are in their speech and then write them consistently. Consistency of your characters’ dialogue is one the last things we consider in the editing process, usually during a line edit. But it really is something that your readers will fall in love with if done correctly.
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